My shaker does not play all of the loaded songs.

The Sansa Shaker supports only .mp3 and .wav file formats. It is possible that you have synced WMA or M4A audio files that have DRM protection. These formats are not supported by the SANSA SHAKER.
Songs purchased through Amazon or copied from your music collection in mp3 format will play on your SHAKER.

It is totally fine for him to listen through the speakers.The mp3 for me wasn't that good, mostly because some of my songs would download and the mp3 player wouldn't play the songs. It would probably be fine for your 5 year-old, maybe the company thinks you have to be 8 and up to be careful and not brake an mp3. Other than that, I have no clue.

my friend you need to convert the songs to mp3 format

"Media Coder" is a free program you can download that will convert your songs on the shaker to MP3 files. I had the same problem. Make sure the shaker is plugged into computer so that you will be able to choose the songs on it to convert. Very easy to use. Just google "Media Coder" and you should find it.

check the file types from you music the shaker only plays MP3 and PCM WAV  file types. You may have WMA (if u used windows media player) which will not play on the shaker  (i had this same ploblem btw) you can easly find free music file converter software to change these files to mp3 or wav types (which i did), or you could rerip to songs from a cd and tell the windows media player to rip the files as mp3 types instead of the default wma format  from the windows media player widow :
tools >> options >> Rip Music >> under format select mp3 (theres a wav option but i used the mp3 option to be safe) 
do not use the sync feature it will automatically convert your files to to wma (why? i dont know) instead copy the files directly from the folder that contains them :
right click the file you need to put on the player select open file location drag and drop to the player (or copy/paste if you want).
hope this helped =P 

i have a sansa shaker a now i can't listen to my songs

SHAKER ONLY TAKES MP3 FORMAT!!!!!
Use this site to change your format to the correct one for the sansa shaker. This is the only way to load songs from your cds MWA will not work at all. Must convert all files to MWA use site below
http://www.wma-mp3.org/

SHAKER ONLY TAKES MP3 FORMAT!!!!!
Use this site to change your format to the correct one for the sansa shaker. This is the only way to load songs from your cds MWA will not work at all. Must convert all files to MWA use site below
http://www.wma-mp3.org/

SHAKER ONLY TAKES MP3 FORMAT!!!!!
Use this site to change your format to the correct one for the sansa shaker. This is the only way to load songs from your cds MWA will not work at all. Must convert all files to MWA use site below
http://www.wma-mp3.org/

The Shaker only plays songs in MP3 format.

If you Ripped (copied) CD's to your PC with Windows Media Player, the default settings are as WMA.

You will need to delete these and re-copy them to your PC, then transfer to the Shaker.





Best of Luck.